


of stars that do not give a damn

by orphan_account



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fix-It, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3684966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the age of fifty, Harry Hart has never met his match. The issue that he had never considered was that he could meet his match at 50. That his match could be half his age, and Harry couldn’t have noticed the mark the first time they met, because he wouldn’t have seen it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of stars that do not give a damn

**Author's Note:**

> Title credit to WH Auden.

At the age of fifty, Harry Hart has never met his match. He is not naive. He’s done his research. Plenty of people don’t actually have a match. It’s a small percentage, but a small percentage of seven billion people is still very many people.

There is likely no counterpart for the small, almost bullet-shaped birthmark on his left forearm. And that’s fine.

When he was younger he’d been more concerned with it, checking the marks on every man he could. If he found it on a woman, after all, he would only know it didn’t mean what everyone told him it meant. He knew himself well enough to know that. He’d liked the idea, growing up, but he had never planned to let it dictate his life.

Upon joining Kingsman, his lack of match becomes an asset. It’s ideal. That’s what everyone tells him, at least. The lonely ache of something missing that he used to feel in his chest is a benefit, something that can better help him keep detached and keep up walls, a strength that he can continue to grow, something that will make him a better agent.

Then again, the people who told him all this tended to have matches.

But really, Harry isn’t bitter. He’s not upset. He is strong and efficient and can still occasionally find someone to have a brief liason with, someone who doesn’t care about matches, and he carries on with his life.

The issue that he had never considered was that he could meet his match at 50. That his match could be half his age, and Harry couldn’t have noticed the mark the first time they met, because he wouldn’t have seen it.

As such, that Eggsy Unwin could have been his soulmate was something Harry would never have even imagined. Yet, when he finally has twenty-four hours to spend with his protege, and Eggsy is struggling with making a martini, his jacket abandoned on the back of a chair, Harry finally catches a glimpse of something on his forearm. Something almost bullet-shaped.

In the middle of a sentence about how to mix properly, he cuts himself off. His brow furrows, and he reaches out, gently grasping Eggsy’s elbow, turning his arm slightly.

There is a brief silence while Eggsy tries to figure out what he’s doing, and even when he speaks he still sounds confused. Harry can hardly blame him.

“You’ve never seen my birthmark, yeah? I mean, that’s it, if you was wondering. But I haven’t met my match yet or anything if that’s what you was wondering instead. I guess that’s probably something Kingsman likes, yeah? Matches’d be harder to work round. But you proposed my dad, so that must not be a requirement or nothing.”

“It isn’t required, no,” Harry mutters distractedly, letting go of Eggsy’s arm. He tries to relax again, but finds it difficult, and keeps glancing at Eggsy’s arm. “I have been told many times, however, that yes, being matchless is an asset. Never finding one’s match would be... ideal in the eyes of the organization, I suppose.”

“Have you not met yours, then?” Eggsy asks him, quietly. It’s spoken in so gentle a tone that Harry has to look at his face, to see the hint of sadness in his expression.

Though he absolutely knows it would be better if he didn’t, even though it’s absolutely inappropriate and fucking ridiculous and terrible and inadvisable in every possibly way, Harry replies just as quietly, “If you had asked me before tonight, I would have said I hadn’t,” and then rolls up his sleeve.

He knows that for a moment Eggsy doesn’t realize what he’s doing, but once realization dawns on his face he looks just as surprised as Harry feels. Actually he would have expected maybe it would leave Eggsy speechless, but instead he says, “Holy fuck, Harry,” and the corner of Harry’s mouth twitches up.

Eggsy manages to do that a lot, actually. To surprise him, to catch him off guard, to make him smile, even though it’s not something he does often. He’s been fond of Eggsy since not long after picking him up from the police station. Something about him is disarming. There’s an innocence to his charm despite all he’s been through, something gentle about him. There’s no denying either that he’s an attractive young man. Harry had noticed that in spite of himself, even as early as the police station. It was impossible to think of him as the child Harry had met years and years before. He was unrecognizable, very handsome, and very clearly not a boy anymore.

All of this goes through his head fairly quickly, he hopes, though he notices that Eggsy has turned to face him, so now they’re making eye contact. Eggsy still looks shocked, but he’s reaching for Harry’s arm, and Harry turns it slightly, pushes it forward and rests it in Eggsy’s hands. A gentle finger brushes over his birthmark, and then Eggsy’s looking down at his own arm, putting the two marks next to each other.

“I have to say that I... had assumed I was without a match.”

This causes Eggsy to look up at him, and there’s a horribly sad expression on his face. More of Eggsy’s remarkable capability for sympathy. Harry knows how that will cause him trouble in his future as a Kingsman agent, but still finds it undeniably lovable. Lovable. He shouldn’t be thinking that way so soon, but apparently his mind has very quickly made the switch from viewing Eggsy as a friend and protege to viewing him as his soulmate.

Soulmate. Christ.

Still, he smiles in a slightly self-deprecating way and brings a hand up to Eggsy’s face - he hesitates for a moment before touching, but Eggsy leans into it, and Harry sighs.

“You don’t have to look so heartbroken, I wasn’t really concerned about it.”

Eggsy gives him a skeptical look, and Harry opens his mouth to say something else, but Eggsy speaks first.

“Harry, c’mon. Nobody else has been in your house for ages, I can tell. I know it’s probably better Kingsman behavior to be discreet or whatever, but you’ve gotta be lonely.”

That’s hardly something Harry can deny. Instead he merely lifts one shoulder in a poor imitation of a shrug. “I was, yes.” Eggsy grins at the past tense. Harry feels as if he would blush, if he were younger. He’s being horribly presumptuous. The tips of his ears do feel a bit warm. “It wasn’t unbearable, though. I had other things to focus on.”

“You mean work, and Kingsman.”

“Yes.”

They’ve been standing in this odd embrace, with his hand on Eggsy’s cheek and Eggsy’s hand on his forearm, for at least a few minutes. Finally Eggsy shifts, carefully putting his arms around Harry’s waist, as if he’s not sure it’s allowed. Harry only shifts slightly closer to him.

“No offense, Harry, but I think you should sort out your priorities a little, make some rearrangements, have a little fun.”

He huffs out something close to a chuckle and puts his free arm around Eggsy to keep him close. “I’ll keep that advice in mind. But at the moment my priority is making certain you become a proper Kingsman agent. Then you can have input in my schedule.”

“That a deal?”

For a moment, his future is laid out before him. Eggsy will make Kingsman, Harry will be proud, they will be the picture of professionalism in Arthur’s presence, but will come back to Harry’s after to celebrate. They will be able to work together, to spend time together outside of work as well, there will be domesticity, and that silly dog that Eggsy chose, and drinks and films and Harry getting to show Eggsy all sorts of things he’s never seen before - fine theater and places he’s never been. It will be like seeing them all again for the first time, to watch his face. These are all the things he has to look forward to.

With that in mind, Harry knows he is smiling widely as he nods. “I suppose it is, yes.” He speaks quietly, and leaning in, the smile falls from his face, as he seals this agreement with a gentle, lingering kiss.

Eggsy’s lips are warm, and soft, and slightly damp, and Harry has not kissed anyone properly in a very long time. So long that he can’t quite remember the last time. He’s missed the gentle intimacy of it, the sounds of hitched breathing echoing in his own mouth. He’s missed the lingering sensitivity when one pulls away.

“If there’s somebody that actually assigns these things, I think I probably owe them an enormous fucking thank you.”

Harry chuckles, his forehead still pressed gently to Eggsy’s. “That’s ridiculous. If anything I think they probably owe you an apology, but you’re certainly a flatterer.”

That causes Eggsy to pull back, and he’s practically glaring, which just makes Harry laugh again. Eggsy pokes him in the chest. “Don’t laugh at me, Harry Hart, you’re the one that’s ridiculous. You’re fucking gorgeous, and - I don’t know, loads of other stuff as well, plus a brilliant kisser. I’m not gonna spend all night complimenting you, even though I could, it’d be embarrassing, but nobody owes me an apology.”

It’s more than a bit touching, and Harry has to put a hand on the back of Eggsy’s neck and pull him close again to kiss his forehead. “That’s a lovely thing to say. But if you’d hold off on your scolding or your thanking higher powers for the time being, it’d be much appreciated. We really should finish this martini lesson and head off to bed. Twenty-four hours is only so long, and then you’ll be headed back to HQ for your final test.”

The look on Eggsy’s face isn’t quite a smirk, but it’s a near thing. “Planning to court me like a gentleman, then? Even though we’re soulmates?”

Sighing, Harry kisses Eggsy once more on the temple and moves away slightly. “If you’re implying that I’m not planning to take you directly to bed, you’d be correct. I think we should wait until you’ve taken your final test at least. You’ve got enough going on without adding a relationship to the mix. Once you’re a Kingsman, we can... celebrate.”

Harry knows that Eggsy is smirking at that, he’s smirking a little as well, but he’s deliberately turned away from the temptation, looking at the drinks table again, and moving the barely started martini out of the way.

“Let’s start this again.”

There’s a sigh from beside him, but Eggsy puts his chin over Harry’s shoulder to watch, his arms around Harry’s waist. It’s certainly not the way they were doing it earlier, but Harry can’t find it in himself to complain.

In spite of a few Eggsy-based distractions in the form of some nuzzling at the side of his neck, Harry thinks he gets across the method for a real proper martini, and once he’s done it, he gives up on any other plans for the night. He turns to hand Eggsy the martini, to let him try it, and Eggsy kisses him again.

It is a little rougher this time, a little less chaste, not totally unexpected since Eggsy was the one to initiate it. How Harry keeps his grip on the martini glass and manages to pull away is uncertain, but he does both.

“Here,” he says, handing Eggsy the glass.

This becomes a challenge as well, since Eggsy licks his lips before taking a drink, and his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and his neck is truly one of the loveliest parts of him, Harry can’t help but think.

“Not bad,” Eggsy says. He hands it back to Harry, and for his own sanity’s sake, Harry finishes it off.

“Bed now, I think. The guest bedroom for you, I’ve already set everything up.”

“You was planning to have me over, then?”

The statement seems a little obvious, and Harry tilts his head, raises an eyebrow. “Of course. Twenty-four hours to spend, where else was I going to take you?”

Eggsy grins. “You knew I’d pass the test, then. With the train. And that Charlie wouldn’t.”

Ah. Harry smiles slightly, even if it’s not a completely happy one. “You’d been threatened with death and still protected my name once before. I knew you could do it. I hadn’t a single doubt. I was... also expecting that Arthur’s candidate may have been poorly chosen, yes.”

“Charlie was an absolute fucking prick.”

“So you’d said.”

Eggsy hums, and leans forward against Harry, pressing close again to put his head on Harry’s chest. Harry lets him, although he starts moving towards the stairs, taking Eggsy with him.

They make it to the guest bedroom before Eggsy holds his own weight properly, stretches a bit, and sits down on the bed. “Sure you don’t wanna stay? We don’t have to do nothing but sleep, I do get what you mean about me being a Kingsman first. But it’d be nice, y’know.”

Harry knows it would be nice. It’s part of the problem. There’s still some part of him that’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the hiccup. He’s not sure at the moment exactly what it’ll be at the moment, but he hasn’t had anything so simply lovely in his entire life. This gentle and uncomplicated romance blooming between himself and Eggsy will only remain so while they’re in his home tonight. He knows that. There’s a multitude of outside factors waiting to ruin everything once they’ve left tomorrow.

It’s that precise fact, though, that makes him sigh, and smile fondly, and start taking off his shoes. “Fine. Let me go and change into my pyjamas, and I’ll stay in here with you tonight.”

He gets a grin in return for his words, and he quickly follows through on them, coming back and laying his dressing gown on a chair for the morning before he settles into bed next to Eggsy.

“I’ll let you sleep in the morning,” he says quietly as Eggsy curls up close to him. “I imagine you haven’t been getting much in the recruit bunks. I don’t think we’ve done anything to improve them since I was in there. The beds were like cardboard.”

“Yeah, still are,” Eggsy mutters, and Harry can feel his smile against his chest, and that’s rather nice. Something new, in fact. Simple domestic things like that are something he’s never really experienced. Most people aren’t interested in non-soulmate long term relationships. He’d thought them a waste of time as well. Now he doesn’t mind that he did.

Those are the last words they exchange that night, as he feels Eggsy drift off fairly shortly after that. Harry stays up a while longer thinking, but he doesn’t dwell on unhappy possibilities much at all. Mostly he watches Eggsy, and then drifts off to sleep himself.

He wakes first in the morning, which does not surprise him. Eggsy is still asleep, an arm still wrapped around Harry’s waist, and he carefully extricates himself from the grasp without waking Eggsy. He thinks in passing that Kingsman training may have helped with that.

In the end he chooses to go ahead and shower and dress, leaving his dressing gown for Eggsy in case he’d like to wear it. He makes breakfast, and has finally decided to go ahead and eat when Eggsy comes stumbling downstairs, hair disheveled, wearing Harry’s dressing gown. It might very well be the most endearing thing Harry’s ever seen.

After pulling out Eggsy’s chair for him, and getting him seated, he makes him a cup of tea and a plate of breakfast and sits back down across from him.

Then, maybe just to amuse himself, he decides to try and teach Eggsy a bit of dining etiquette during breakfast. It doesn’t go very well, partly because Eggsy’s very clearly not fully awake, but seeing him try to blearily differentiate between forks and listening to him mumble, “What the fuck’s anyone need three forks for? Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?” overrides any potential frustration there could have been.

After breakfast, he tells Eggsy to get dressed, because the next order of business involves going out. In fact, the next order of business is to take Eggsy in to get him a proper suit, but he doesn’t tell him that until they’ve reached their destination.

Unfortunately it’s in the shop that their full twenty-four hours is cut short by a visit from Valentine.

Harry has other business to attend to, then, and he doesn’t quite get the chance to tell Eggsy a proper goodbye and good luck. It doesn’t really bother him that he didn’t until Merlin calls to let him know that Eggsy failed the test and drove home in a stolen Kingsman issued cab.

The fight that results, once Eggsy arrives at his house, is unpleasant to say the least. Eggsy trusted him, trusted Kingsman in a variety of other examples, so why couldn’t he pass the bloody dog test? It was simple, obvious, after the parachute incident. Why would he think Kingsman would have them kill the dogs they’d worked so hard to train? Beyond seeming heartless, it just wasn’t logical. It was true the test was also a test of being able to follow orders in spite of sentiment, trusting Kingsman judgment over one’s own, but it also meant that Eggsy thought them capable of completely needless murder of innocent lives.

Thought Harry capable of it.

They both say regrettable things, but it’s Eggsy’s words that cut deepest, Harry thinks. The accusation of Harry being heartless beyond even shooting his dog, the implication that he doesn’t care about what happened to Lee Unwin either. He thought he had at least proved that much.

It’s honestly a relief to be interrupted by Merlin, to have a mission to focus on instead. After telling Eggsy he’ll sort it out when he returns, he changes on his own, and then he goes back downstairs and curtly gives Eggsy the password for his home terminal before taking his leave.

That’s a decision he comes to regret, later, once he looks out over the church, over all the destruction he caused due to Valentine’s mind control, and knows that Eggsy saw every moment of it.

He had meant it, though, that he would go back and sort things out. That’s all he can think about while he stares down the barrel of Valentine’s gun. It’s not a long moment before the gun goes off, but it’s long enough to think that.

The shot knocks Harry very properly unconscious. It causes some skull damage, where the bullet grazes just above his temple on the left side of his head after ricocheting off of his glasses, newly bulletproofed, but there’s no permanent brain damage, no long-lasting trauma. He bleeds out long enough that he has some heavy blood loss, and he does remain unconscious in the hospital long enough that he completely misses V-Day.

All of this is told to him by a nurse, once he’s regained consciousness. At least about his injury and what he missed, not his glasses. All hell broke loose in the hospital, apparently. But he’d been out, and the remaining staff had either been lucky or not in the hospital that day. He’s surprised no one managed to kill him while he was out cold, but he doesn’t know enough to know if he was just lucky or something else had happened. Can’t know.

What he does know is that he has to contact Kingsman as soon as possible. The fact that he’s not in the HQ infirmary speaks to the fact that they believed he was dead.

Eggsy believed he was dead.

After they’d seen him shot in the head it isn’t so surprising, but he’s been out for nearly a week, and so that’s a week they’ve all had to grieve him and try to recover. A week he’s just been laid up in a hospital in Kentucky.

He has a number memorized for these occasions, and once he gets to a phone, he calls it and reaches the ‘customer service’ line. They give him Arthur’s direct line, which he calls and is surprised to find Merlin picking up.

Harry forgets himself in surprise, and says “What are you doing answering the Arthur line?”

There’s a long pause, of course. Because he’s supposed to be dead.

Then Merlin says, “Harry?”

It’s not a secure line. But Merlin had never been the best of them at keeping up the codenames. “Yes, sorry. It’s me. I... realize that’s probably a surprise, I’m in a hospital in Kentucky. Not dead. I was unconscious for a week. Missed the near end of the world, I hear.”

There’s another long pause. Maybe a sniffle. He gives Merlin the dignity of ignoring it. “Yeah, that’s true. Sure you’d be proud to hear Eggsy’s the one that kept it from being the end of the world.”

That certainly does make Harry smile. “How did that happen?”

Merlin makes a noise that isn’t quite a chuckle, is a little more tired, and Harry suddenly hates that he’s still on the other side of the Atlantic, and won’t be able to fly, most likely, for some time. He wants to hear their stories in person, see Merlin, see Eggsy.

Eggsy.

“I should probably let him tell you the story, actually. Think he’d kill me if I stole his thunder. Should I-“

“Can you put him on? Go and get him?”

He knows Merlin is perceptive enough to sense the fondness and the slightly unprofessionally eager tone of his voice, but he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care how little he knows about all the circumstances, suddenly, just wants Eggsy to know that he’s alright, and wants to hear his voice.

“He’s doing some training at the moment, I’ll get him. Should I tell him it’s you?”

That’s something Harry doesn’t know how to approach. How do you tell your soulmate that you aren’t dead? He should probably at least do it himself.

“Just... tell him that he’s got a call.”

It takes some time, and he can tell from Eggsy’s gruff “Hello,” that he’s not pleased at being interrupted, and is more than a bit confused, but he hopes that everything can be made up for.

“Eggsy,” he says gently, and there’s a sharp inhale on the other end of the phone.

There’s no other words though.

“Ah. I’m... in a hospital, in Kentucky. I’ve been unconscious for nearly a week. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to contact you sooner.”

The silence continues for nearly a minute, and Harry is figuring out what else he should say when Eggsy finally says, in a voice rough with emotion, “You’ve got a bad fucking habit of getting yourself in a coma, Harry.”

He laughs, and Eggsy laughs, both of them mostly out of the absurdity of the situation, he knows.

“How’d you survive?”

He tells Eggsy. Parrots back what he was told. Ricocheted bullet, merely a graze, no permanent damage.

There’s another silence, but this time it feels tense with something. “Harry, look. I feel like... I think there’s something I oughta tell you.”

That’s a little worrying.

“What is it?”

“I thought you was dead. Just. Keep that in mind. But... Just cause of the way things worked out, after I got done saving the world, I might have had sex with a princess.”

Harry blinks a few times, at the barren hospital wall in front of him, and then laughs properly. “With a princess?”

He can practically feel the relief, even from this far away. “Yeah, Swedish princess. The one that went missing. I was - I mean, I saved the world, and she offered.”

“Well. I can hardly begrudge you. Certainly a once in a lifetime opportunity, I’d imagine. But I’d prefer to know a little more about you saving the world.”

So Eggsy tells him.

It’s another week before Eggsy can fly out to Kentucky. They speak on the phone regularly in the meantime. Merlin arranges it all, though, so that Eggsy can stay with Harry until he’s well enough to fly back.

The news of Arthur’s betrayal surprised him very little, and less than the fact that Merlin offers him the job. Honestly, though, after the church incident, he believes he’ll be glad to be off the field for at least a while.

The backdrop of the future, then, looks significantly different from how Harry had so briefly pictured it the night he first discovered he and Eggsy were soulmates.

He did not get to be there when Eggsy made Kingsman, and received his previous codename. There is no Arthur to fake professionalism in front of, since he’s Arthur now. It’ll be some time, probably, before he takes a field mission so that he and Eggsy can work together.

On the other hand, it’s also surprisingly similar to how he’d pictured it. Once they’ve returned to London, Eggsy spends quite a bit of time at his house, mostly because he’d moved in while Harry was presumed dead, and Harry wouldn’t hear of throwing him or his family out. It’s big enough for all of them, even though it takes a bit of negotiating. It’s incredibly domestic, and they spend plenty of time together outside of work. Harry does take Eggsy to see plays he’s never seen, watches films with him, plans to take him to Paris. They take walks with JB, and with Daisy when Michelle needs a break. It’s quite the future. Harry’s very pleased that Valentine didn’t manage to steal it away from him.

Unsurprisingly, he becomes much fonder of his birthmark, and it doesn’t effect his efficiency as a Kingsman at all. As suspected, all of the people who told him things were better that way were bloody liars. At least in his case.

**Author's Note:**

> So yes I have a thing for soulmate aus and I wanted to write some Kingsman fix-it fic. I doubt anyone's really surprised. I hope it was enjoyable, in spite of how massively self-indulgent it was.


End file.
